


Second Adventure: Fluff

by crookedcig



Series: How to Drive a Genius Mad in a Single Simple Step [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Platonic Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-29
Updated: 2013-12-29
Packaged: 2018-01-06 15:23:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1108445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedcig/pseuds/crookedcig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A choose-your-own-adventure style story for the Sherlock Series 3 mini-bang (http://sherlockminibang.tumblr.com/). Each story is told in three parts and you can chose your own combination of angst, romance, or non-romantic fluff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part the First: Glove Upon that Hand

[ ](http://cuttleflesh.tumblr.com/)

Despite the best efforts of both his brother and his assistant, Mycroft Holmes had never grown fond of texting.  It left a trace of his actions, easily found, and more than that often couldn’t convey the heavy threat that lingered in easy, too-polite tones.  So it came as a bit of a surprise one evening to receive a text from a familiar name.  His mobile, his private mobile with the number that bypassed Anthea and went right to his pocket, flashed brightly with a message from “DI G Lestrade (Pers).”

_I’m drunk._

Mycroft waited nearly five minutes before he responded with a cool _< Are you informing me because you expect me to do something about it?>_

Less than thirty seconds before he got his response.  

_Hardly._

_Informing you so you can block my number._

_Or ignore me._

_Because I’m going to say awful things._

_< Fire away, Detective Inspector.>_

_You never have normal conversations with me._

_For more than two sentences._

_< If this is your definition of awful, I’m very surprised.>_

This was no officially the longest texting exchange he’d ever had.  Anthea was going to be pleased, and he found it difficult to be surprised it was Gregory Lestrade who’d finally gotten him to do it.

_It might get worse._

_< Go on then.  Bruise my ego.>_

_It’s really annoying that you never speak._

_I always end up rambling._

_And the sound of my voice is irritating._

_< Tame.  This is a cuddle, Detective Inspector.>_

_I don’t get to be nice to murderers.  I have to be nice to someone, I guess you’re them.  Him._

_< Would you like to know the awful things about you?>_

There was a pause of several minutes.

_Yes._

_Regret being drunk though, since you’ll likely have my mobile wiped to get rid of evidence._

Mycroft didn’t know if he should be comforted that the other man had surmised his likely course of action so easily.  

It had been a long 24 months for the two of them both individually and together, but he’d been unaware that Greg had been paying attention.  It was novel, having someone that might be a friend.  More?

_< You’re infuriatingly principled.  And frustratingly competent.>_

_< Much better at your job than I’d prefer.  I wish my brother had liked Anderson or Donovan better, they’re easier to manipulate.>_

_He didn’t like anyone you could’ve manipulated._

_< True.>_ There was a single moment where he missed meddling with NSY affairs, but it was gone quick enough.

_< I’m sending a car to take you home.>_

_Not getting in it._

_< You will be very hungover if you don’t go home and drink some water soon.  Court tomorrow will be difficult.>_

_I don’t want to know how you know I have court tomorrow._

_I don’t want to go home._

_< I’ll send Anthea if you like.>_

_No, you’re not making your poor assistant look after me._

_< She volunteered.>_

_No._

Staring at his mobile for a long moment, Mycroft sighed and shook his head.  Five minutes later, he finally sent _< Of course.>  _Then it was back to paperwork and tea strong enough to strip enamel off his teeth.

 

* * *

 

Want to continue on to chapter 2 with more platonic fluff? Go [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1108445/chapters/2230957).

Want to continue on to chapter 2 with angst? Go [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1108431/chapters/2230922).

Want to continue on to chapter 2 with romantic fluff? Go [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1108849/chapters/2231890).


	2. Part the Second: But Soft

It wasn’t entirely clear precisely how he’d ended up in the car, but Anthea was shouting something at him from the back seat, looking rather furious, and the driver was shoving him in with her and everything got a bit jumbled.

By the time Greg had himself rightside up in the seat, the pretty woman was snapping the buckle on his seatbelt and pushing a bottle of water into his right hand, competent and confident as if she managed drunk DIs on the regular.  Though, come to think of it, managing Mycroft’s tea-time revolutions probably put the challenge of his inebriation somewhere between “a pleasant hobby” and “childsplay.”

“He was actually smiling there, for a moment.”  Scowling at him, Anthea straightened his tie with a brisk jerk of her hands, leaving him choking on the throatful of water he’d been attempting to swallow.  “I expect you to cooperate, Detective Inspector.”

“With what?  With you?  I’m under the impression you’ll strangle me if I don’t.”  That at least earned him a flash of a smile, just as fleeting as if it’d been on Mycroft’s face instead.  There was a moment, a single startling one where Lestrade wondered just how close the two of them were before he shook the unsettling thought away like a dog sloughing water.

“With my plan.”  The look she shot him was pure ice, though there was a spark of something there.  Maybe if he’d not been quite so drunk, Greg could have parsed it out better.  But as it was, he thought he spotted a hint of humor in her eyes.  A twitch at the corner of her mouth that may have turned into a smile if she’d let it grow up a bit and come out to play.  “I’ve been pushing for months to get the two of you into position and I won’t let you ruin it at the last minute because you just had to have that last beer and your pride, too.”  He’d been about to interrupt, to ask what, precisely, the plan was so he could hum along, when she continued, pushing at his hair with her fingertips.  “Why did you cut your hair again?  It’s impossible to make it do anything but sit there.  He’ll be up on the balcony, most likely.  Just enough scotch in his system to be pliant. ”  She was giving him whiplash, rapidfire and screeching around hairpin conversational turns.

“Like Romeo and Juliet.”  She actually did smile at that, though the thoughtless statement had set Greg blushing and gulping at the water again.

“Hopefully without the death.”  When she bolstered his analogy, he smiled in return.

“And a bit gayer.”

“Oh, you really are drunk, aren’t you?”  Laughing at him without malice, Anthea patted his hand and urged the bottle back up to his mouth, clearly trying to help him sort his thoughts before he went.  “Who am I, then?”

“You’d be the nurse.  Or maybe the priest.  Both?”  If anyone had told him at the beginning of his day that he’d get Anthea to giggle and hide her grin behind a hand, he would have told them to check the weather in hell.  But as it was, her reaction pleased him, left him more comfortable with the fact that he was essentially being kidnapped.

When the car stopped outside a home in Belgravia that he wouldn’t be able to afford even if he added up the past ten generations of Lestrades’ lifetime earnings, Greg paled a bit, feeling awkward once more.

“Go on, then.  Balcony’s around the back.  This car is my way home, so if you’d be so kind as to moon over Mr Holmes for a while and maybe even buy me tomorrow morning off, I’d be forever grateful.”  The DI was a bit unstead on his feet as she pushed him bodily from the vehicle, waving him towards the house.

“Haven’t you heard?  The moon is sick and pale with grief that she is not as fair as...Mr Holmes, I guess.”  Anthea’s trilling laugh had him grinning again as he shut the door.

“You’re each as bad as the other.  He’ll come back with sonnets about your hair, if you keep quoting the bard.”  Waving before rolling up the window and letting the driver whisk her off, Anthea left Lestrade alone to his fate.

 

* * *

 

Want to continue on to chapter 3 with more platonic fluff? Go [here](../2231807).

Want to continue on to chapter 3 with angst? Go [here](../../../1108431/chapters/2230923).

Want to continue on to chapter 3 with romantic fluff? Go [here](../../../1108849/chapters/2231892).

 


	3. Part the Third: With a Kiss, I Die

No one had ever accused him, a minor government official, of being a terrifically demonstrative man.  Public was a place where false, thin smiles were offered more quickly than genuine ones.  Public was a place for masks and quiet power.  But home was another thing entirely, where the outside world rarely intruded and he could, more often than not, be himself.

Not that most people in the world would be able to tell the subtle difference between the two, but it was there for those who had eyes and the patience to look.  There was a certain DI who thought he might be able to understand, given a little bit of time, but he was far more drunk than he’d realized and frankly trying to innumerate the differences between private Mycroft and public Holmes while also contemplating scaling a trellis and quoting Shakespeare sounded a lot more feasible than it really was.  Staring up at the tip of a black house slipper that looked like it might have been velvet and definitely had a bit of biscuit crumb on the bottom, the Bard began to fail him because all Greg could remember was ‘shall I speak at this’ but that was useless as (unfortunately) the other man wasn’t at the moment waxing poetic about his DI-love.

“I suppose the bottom of my slipper is quite fascinating, if you’ve never seen it before.”  Still in his bespoke three piece suit, buttoned up tight but for the slippers, Mycroft leaned just far enough to get pale eyes on Greg’s face, one brow hitched up in a question that neither of them really wanted him to say aloud.

“Just wondering if I could make it up that without hurting myself or the house.”  Gesturing at the trellis, Greg managed a shaky smile, awkward now that he was facing the reality of flirting with Mycroft instead of the threat of it.  “How hard are you going to laugh, if I don’t manage it?”

“Not enough to wound your pride.”  That was rather kind of the elder Holmes to say, sliding to his feet and bending over the rail to watch the new arrival for a quiet moment.  Greg felt deeply, unfairly silly for a moment and hesitated.

“With love’s light wings did I o’er-perch these walls--” When Mycroft didn’t interrupt or immediately burst into a (restrained, surely) chuckle, he forged ahead, remembering far more than he’d thought possible from his school days.  “For stony limits cannot hold love out, And what love can do that dares love attempt.”

“I would ask ‘By whose direction found’st thou out this place?’ but I have some idea that my assistant will be getting a reprimand in the morning.”  Greg’s laugh was easy in the face of that and he shrugged one shoulder.  “If you’d like to save your hands and my morning glories, there are steps just around here.”

At the other man’s direction, Greg found himself shortly standing beside Mycroft, wondering at the turn of events that had brought him there and feeling very much more dizzy than he had moments before.  The silence stretched between them, pale and uncomfortable, and they were both surprised when it was Mycroft who bled the tension off.

“It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden; Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be Ere one can say ‘It lightens.’”  

He knew the other words.  The ones that followed about summer and flowers, and a lack of satisfaction.  But it didn’t do much for him to speak any of them in response, so Greg, patient and solid and too-kind Greg, leaned in and stole a kiss from Mycroft, fisting his callused fingers in the lapels of the taller man’s jacket.  When he leaned back, they stared at each other for a moment before dissolving into laughter.

Nothing.  After all that, there’d been nothing at all when that first kiss had landed, not even a vague stirring of heat deep in the belly.  It had been, in fact, a bit like kissing a dear friend hello instead of a man who’d been maybe flirting with him a bit.  A bit like two men still grieving for something they’d lost and trying to fill the hole in a not entirely healthy way.

“Well, that wasn’t at all what I was expecting.”  Mycroft touched his fingertips to his mouth as if in disbelief, shaking his head as the other man continued.  “Where was that lightning you were talking about?”  They both chuckled at that and turned to sit, accepting the lack of spark between their mouths almost as easily as they had a certain detective’s saunter towards pavement, with a little struggle and a not a small amount of grief.  It would have been so good, if the chemistry had been there, but life had never been easy for them before and there was no reason to expect it now.

A moment later, and Greg was very glad indeed he hadn’t completely settled in his chair, because Mycroft was buckling, staring at his phone as if it had bit him.  Back on his feet, the DI caught his (friend’s?) elbow and lowered him gently into a seat, patting his shoulder awkwardly.  “Mycroft?”

Not a single word as the man he’d grown to know, as well as anyone could know him really, over the past two years began to retreat behind a mask that Greg hadn’t seen since before he’d  been called to identify a body.  Straightening his tie, which hadn’t needed the adjustment, Mycroft handed Lestrade his phone and disappeared entirely, leaving Greg cold and disconnected.

[NOT DEAD. SORT IT FOR ME, WOULD YOU? --SH]

By the time he looked up from the astonishing message, Mycroft had disappeared completely, as if his brother’s name had breathed life back into the armor he’d lived behind before Sherlock’s death.  Left in his wake was Mr Holmes, who would not take kindly at all to muttered quotes from Romeo and Juliet, and never would have let his friend Greg steal a kiss, let alone consider more.

 

* * *

 

Want to chose a new adventure? Go [here](../../../../series/66248)!


End file.
